Messages

[Sinitrena]

Oh hush, Baron. As an official of the FWC, I've been very busy doing offically official stuff. My insight and judgement is in demand in these trying times. This whole Brexit thing has had my phone ringing off the hook!

Anyhoo, it's time to vote!

The contestants are, in order of entry:

Sinitrena - "A Paper. A Pen."
Mandle - "In Name Only"
WHAM - "Eden"
Baron - "The Value of Nothing"

Times are tough, and everyone is tightening their belt to get by with less. So please cast your ONE VOTE with care. It's the only one you've got, so spend it wisely. I'll close voting in a couple of days, and we'll see how everyone did.

Let the hobo boxing voting begin!

Happy b-day, Chicky (and everyone else I've missed recently)

There will be a slight extension for any hobos out there who are in between towns, riding the rails, looking for free wifi to upload the stories they've written. Contest closes Friday night.

True, but there's still time to write something new for the contest.

If only we could scrounge up another writer or two. But who would volunteer for such a thing in these hard times? WHO, I SAY???

Congrats Peder and Drew

More entries! MOAR!

Congrats, Dropped Monocle!

Hooray! An entry! \o/

Looks like someone's not listening to your announcement there...

Of course not! All part of my master plan. Why do you think I timed my announcement to coincide with that video? Have you never read Marx? "Boobs are the opiate of the masses!"

Thanks to Jack and company for putting together a fine awards ceremony. Much fun was had!

You need me.

Taking over the REAL ceremony will require getting up on stage again. If you can see your way clear to appointing ME as Minister of Truth once again, I could have a ramp installed, but purely because of my unique interpretation of the fire codes.

Don't be so easily swayed by animated gifs of mischievous young women. Send this upstart Chicky to the dungeons.

Only if I get one of those cool motorized carts. My knees and ankles are getting stiff with age. I'd like one of those motorized chairs for the staircases too.

Ponch has been spreading the tall tale that he "stormed" the stage. The truth is that [REDACTED] helped him up the stage, as one would an old lady.

See? It's this sort of backstabbing that gets you get kicked out of the glorious revolution and airbrushed out of history.

Seamless! And we have always been at war with Oceania, citizens!

Ponch, your behaviour is completely unacceptable! All hail the bovine overlord!

Excellent work, Chicky! You are now my new Minister of Truth, replacing [REDACTED] who never existed at all and has been sent off the work camps.

Yeah, seems to work. And I'm kinda sorry that I missed when Ponch was on.

It was a glorious tale of my rise to power and the unavoidable culling of the unbelievers, Adeel. Only those present who would bow to my authority were spared. As you can see, there were few survivors.

Never trust a doctor with a cigar.  Ever.

Normally entries for this competition have to be original and unpublished.  Can we get a ruling from the Grand Poobah of Contest Administration on this?

OFFICIAL RULING INCOMING!
Yes, Baron is right. Entries for the FWC have to be written specifically for the contest within the time limit of the competition. That's the challenge, you know? Your story is quite nice, KyriakosCH, but it's not fair to the other writers here to make them compete with something that was written earlier, polished to a publishable state, and vetted by an editor. I hope you'll entertain us with a different, entirely new story for our competition, but I can't allow this one to enter the contest. Sorry.

I can confirm that the test build is up and running. Also, with no one to stop it, I have stormed the stage and declared myself ruler of AGS. It could have been prevented, but everyone was too lazy to test but me.



Life will be harsh under my new regime, but you have no one to blame but yourselves.

Sure. 1,000 words would be just fine.

AGS Awards. After all this buildup, I couldn't possibly skip it!

I'm not going set a word limit for this contest in case someone has the next "Grapes of Wrath" inside their head and has been waiting for the chance to post it to the FWC. But if you want to impose such a limit on yourself (or any other similar handicap), please feel free to do so.

[FORTNIGHTLY WRITING CONTEST]

Sharpen those pencils and open your notebooks, it's time for the new
FORTNIGHTLY WRITING CONTEST
And this time around the theme is...

SCARCITY

Times are tough all over, and nowhere are people working harder to make do with less than in your story.

Spin me a yarn about characters facing hardships with less than they need to get through it comfortably. They can be lacking any number of things: money, moral support, blood, breathable air, clean socks, or whatever you can think of.

Deadline is June 22. First come, first served. Don't be late. Doors to the FWC soup kitchen / flop house will close at midnight that night, and no other hobo authors in search of work will be let in after that.

Once all submissions are in, I'll give you guys a few days to vote -- but because we're all getting by with less, each of you can only manage to spare a single vote. So make that one vote count! Sure, I know we've all become spoiled with our abundance of votes in the last year or two, but those lush salad days are over. You only get one vote to cast, just like it was back in the old days of this competition, when penny candy cost a nickel and we had to walk to school in ten feet of snow and it was uphill both ways. So save that one vote for the one person you think is most deserving.

It'll be fun, trust me!

Submissions will be judged by the usual criteria and trophies might be handed out, provided that I can cobble something together in this economic malaise. Who wants a store bought trophy anyway? Nothing says love like a homemade gift!